A class of devices employing waveguide gratings interconnected by a waveguide lens and functioning as a dynamic optical wavelength power equalizer is described in C. R. Doerr, et al, "Dynamic wavelength equalizer in silica using the single-filtered-arm interferometer", IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 11, pp. 581-583, 1999. Other examples include wavelength-selective cross connects and large-channel-count wavelength add-drop filters. The aforementioned article points out that a ripple-free spectrum can be achieved for a cascaded grating-lens-grating device by taking care not to under-sample the spectrum at the lens inlets to the star couplers. In previous designs, both the grating and lens inlet center-to-center spacings in the inner star couplers were dimensioned to minimize loss and achieve small size. Unfortunately, small size tends to produce significant mutual coupling among both the grating and lens inlets which results in a periodic phase distortion of the light when it reaches the grating arms. Likewise, the mutual coupling in the grating inlets results in a periodic phase distortion of the light when it reaches the lens arms, the periods being equal to the Brillouin zone widths. In addition to these effects, polarization-dependent loss (PDL) limits the usefulness of the equalizer, and for many applications the PDL must be &lt;0.1 dB over the entire spectrum of interest and, even when good engineering practices are followed it is not unusual to have a PDL of more than 5 dB. Reducing polarization dependency in optical devices such as equalizers having chromatically variable transmissivity would yield a device that is more generally useful in wavelength-division multiplexed networks.